When you create a SQL Server Data-Tier project in Visual Studio, you can choose to configure a Server Selection policy. This policy enables you to specify the requirements that an instance of SQL Server must meet for the data-tier application (DAC) to be deployed on that instance. For example, you can specify the version of the operating system that the target instance of SQL Server must be running, or the edition of SQL Server that must be installed.

Note

Configuring the Server Selection policy is optional.

When a database administrator runs the Deploy Data-tier Application Wizard to deploy the DAC on an instance of SQL Server, the policy is evaluated against the selected instance. In the wizard, the database administrator is presented with the evaluation results for each requirement that you defined in the policy. If there are policy violations, the database administrator can choose to cancel the deployment, or to ignore policy violations and continue with the deployment if the violations are not considered critical.